When Lena met Kara
by Dom186
Summary: A brilliant but damaged heiress and a sunny but broken alien. Both similar. Both different. Both in hiding and trying to escape the unbearable weight of their family. And both end up sharing a dorm-room during their freshmen year. What happened next would change each one of them forever...along with the entire world. Can the Earth survive an alliance between an El and a Luthor?
1. Chapter 1

Hello readers.

This will be AU in a lot of many and unpredictable way and yet _not_. Also, I reserve the right to throw in any DC universe character in there that I want.

One thing that is straight up AU is that Lena was told that she was Lionel's biological daughter and Lex's half-sister right from the start so she knows she's a true Luthor. Her true mother remains unknown…for now.

Enjoy.

Disclaimer: Not mine

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_Lena Luthor_

Lena Luthor was sitting primly on her small one-person bed, surrounded by her various luggage that a helpful fellow freshman had carried all the way to her dorm after nothing but a wink a small touch to the shoulder, took in her modest two-person dorm-room and thought.

_This is it._

She'd done it. She'd gotten away from her insane family and her infamous last name, well for the next four years at least, but still a definite victory in her book. She felt _free_ for the first time in a very long time and she couldn't help the giddy smile that came to her face.

She had that strange feeling that people sometimes get if they so happened to look at the right point in time in their life with the right perspective. She felt like she was seeing outside of herself, like she was witnessing a defining moment of her life _as it was happening_; normally those realizations always came after the fact, sometimes before, but rarely _during_.

It gave her the peculiar sensation of being a spectator watching a scene in the movie of the life of one Lena Luthor.

Naturally, as she thought about the plot to that movie; starting with the beginning, she started to recall the long, strange and arduous journey that had brought her to this room, in this time, as _her_. Hers was certainly not a common journey, nothing like the boring life-story her future roommate would no doubt regale her with this evening she was sure.

Intellectually she knew that those first few years with her mother had in fact _happened_, that she had been present right there with her, but it all felt like a story she'd been told. In truth she could barely remember anything about those years and her mother at all, despite her prodigious memory and to her great frustration. A few flashes here and there, a colour, a smell or a sound but nothing concrete. Except for two things: there were only _two_ memories that she remembered clearly and they were the two she thought about the most.

The first was nothing more than the memory of a _feeling_: she had felt loved, happy, free and _safe_, like she had been exactly where she was supposed to be, like she _belonged_. Lena suspected that, despite children's tendency to idealize their environment, those first years with her mother living in their little cabin by the lake must have been the happiest she'd ever been (and probably ever would be).

_True happiness_, that's why the feeling had stuck so strongly and was still so clear in her mind so many years later.

And then _it_ happened. And Lena never felt safe or _truly happy_ again.

It was the first and earliest true and clear memory that she had, beyond those flashes of images, sounds or feelings; no _that moment_ she remembered in excruciatingly painful detail.

She remembered it had been a muggy day, cold and humid. She remembered wanting to stay inside where it was warm when her mother had insisted they go down to the dock for some reason. She remembered the smell of the wet earth around her as they strolled down the path towards the small wooden pier by the lake. She remembered how they had both been walking side by side as they always did, except Lena bent down to tie her lace at one point, letting her mum go on ahead just a bit. She still remembered _that_ _damn broken lace_, it had been blue. She remembered how the rotted wooden boards of the embankment creaked with every step, the way they'd had for as long as she could remember. And she remembered the sound of one of the boards finally breaking from decades of wear and tear, and of her mum's cry of surprise as she fell into the freezing water, hitting her head on the dock on the way down. She remembered her mother flailing in the water, a pool of red rapidly expanding around her from where she'd hit her head on the bank (Lena would later learn she'd suffered a concussion and that was why she had been unable to swim properly).

And of course…Lena remembered what _she_ did. She remembered how _she _didn't move a muscle, didn't even cry out to her mother when she fell. And she remembered standing there and just _watching_ her drown, at first with some hope, naturally expecting that her mother would swim back to shore; and then as the minutes dragged on, with growing dread, as her mother struggled more and more to even keep her head afloat. And as her mother kept staying under for longer and longer periods of time, plunging into the muggy water reflected by the morning sun so it looked like she kept disappearing entirely, Lena stayed right where she was, _just watching_. And eventually, after what felt to Lena like hours but was really less than ten seconds, her mom's head dipped below the surface one last time, her arms and upper body followed suit and the last thing the little girl saw of her mother was a single hand piercing the inscrutable water that soon disappeared with the rest of her…she didn't come back up, despite little Lena waiting for her on the shore for a good long while.

That last image of that solitary hand breaking the mirrored surface of the lake often reminded her of the Lady of the Lake in the Arthurian legend; her mom had been reading it to her just the week before. But during the whole event, Lena had been no King Arthur, no hero, she'd just stood there powerless and watching. The precocious little girl didn't cry out for help, she didn't run to the dock to try and pull her mother back up or dive into the water herself to stop her mother from drowning, she didn't even take a single step forward. Anll of those things she _knew_ she should have done but instead she just _froze _and…she let her mother die.

Years later, Lena would finally gain some perspective and start to accept that she wasn't solely responsible for her mother's death, intellectually at least. After all, even if she _had _tried, what chance did a 4 year old girl have to support the dead-weight of a soaked full-grown woman? There had been _almost certainly _nothing she could have done. Lena _knew _that and had even come to let go of at least _some_ of the overbearing guilt she'd felt at first by reading psychology books about loss and trauma in infants, survivor's guilt and a lot more. Knowledge was like that for Lena, a security blanket. By putting names and concepts to what she was feeling, she managed to conquer it a little.

But she knew the actual feeling, the guilt, would never go away. _And nor should it_ whispered the devil on her shoulder (with a voice that sounded a lot like Lillian's for some reason).

_True despair_, that's why the feeling had stuck so strongly and was still so clear in her mind so many years later.

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After that, contrary to what eventually became, popular belief, Lionel didn't swoop in right away and adopt her. In fact, it would be seven months before he showed up.

Yes, Lena's early start in life was quite atypical for a multi-billion dollar heiress. It hadn't involved servants, shopping and staying up late; it had involved nuns, chores and getting up at the crack of dawn for Morning Prayer.

Lena, just Lena as she still was then, then spent the next seven months of her life in _the system_, same as any young girl in her position: orphaned, penniless, with no one to care or even register her existence, just another dirty waif and mouth to feed in a city that was growing ever heavy with them and ever lighter in their compassion. The child of a drug addict, degenerate or prostitute they thought deep down, sinners and trash just like those who sired them, _deserving_ of their lot in life.

Lena spent that formative time in the Metropolis St-Francis Children's Home (the word orphanage had been cycled out of the media by politicians, it didn't _test _well in the media apparently) where she learned many an important lesson. It was an old Gothic stone-building that was only still standing due to its nature as a "historic monument", being a former Anglican church from the late 18th, and its function as a home for the destitute (the destruction or acquisition of which, even the slimiest of politicians had trouble passing before the city council). The former convent had served as an orphanage for the last eighty years.

Except unfortunately, it had also been eighty years during which the same city-council that proved its benevolence in graciously not tearing the building down, never bothered to appropriate a single cent to its actual renovation. The result was a building that was cold, _very cold_ during winter, filled with drafts, mouldy residue that hadn't been cleaned in _decades_ and a fair number of vermin. Hardly ideal living conditions for children.

But the coldness of the building had been a distant second to the coldness of its, and their, keepers: hard-faced nuns with cold eyes that liked to carry a switch and believed that suffering was the way to atonement and thus that corporeal punishment was the best way to purge the sins from the riff-raff and the _freaks _their once proud city had vomited out on their doorstep.

The Matron in particular, had held a special place in her "heart" for Lena. As soon as she'd arrived, the little green eyed girl had instantly become the old woman's favourite _freak_ to torment. Lena had never known why _her_, there was nothing special about her she thought; she was, in fact, very well-behaved and disciplined compared to the other girls, some older than her even. Maybe it had been because the brunette had been just a little _too _smart for her own good, _too _curious, not afraid enough, the child's luminous green eyes always a bit _too _knowing. And so, with every little thing she did, the Matron would find a way to criticise and chastise her, pulling out her wooden switch and with every whack, there came a bible verse and an assurance that this was done for her _own good_. She was a sinner, it was in her blood, that sin had to be washed out (in her darkest moments, Lena still heard the raspy voice of the old matron and wonders if she'd had it right all along).

Or maybe it was because the Matron could see that Lena didn't truly _believe_ in the words they were forced to repeat at every meal and every Sunday morning. All of their words and stories told over and over again: the Saints, the Trinity, the Resurrection, the Virgin Mary, God…

After having it quoted at her constantly, five year old Lena had finally decided to read that book of theirs, the Bible. Already industrious, Lena didn't do things halfway and read the book cover to cover in less than a month. In her seeming newfound devotion to learn the word of God, the nuns had seen the first true sign of grace in the unnerving little girl with the old eyes and had probably thought this was the first step on her "journey to God".

_It turned out to be the last one. _

In their precious book, all she found was a nonsensical story filled with half-baked and nebulous morality and page after page of such a number of contradictions and inconsistencies as to be frankly absurd and make her wonder about the use of hallucinogens during the 3rd century (and if anyone that quoted it had actually _read_ that thing). Even more, as a precocious child, she understood that those stories were not meant quite as literally as the nuns preached them with every swing of their stick, they were merely allegories…meant for people that lived two-thousand years ago. Now, the nuns were used to these types of questionings (although the children tended to be a lot older) and had plenty of pre-packaged answers straight from the Vatican that they were more than happy to regurgitate to her, most of them included the word Faith in it. Except, not only did she _not_ have that faith of theirs, she wasn't sure she even agreed with the "principles" the book was meant to impart either (especially about women).

Lena more or less the decided then and there that she was done with the Big Guy (the _really _big guy, not the other one). They'd been on bad terms ever since her mum died anyway.

The little girl never repeated any of this to the Matron of course, but she had a feeling that the old woman _knew_ somehow and that was the reason she had always been so hard on her (and hearing her actual thought process as only a 5 year old, the matron may have had a point, there was nothing _normal _about this child).

And then, in a burst of mind-bending irony that some of the nuns actually had the gall to call "God's will", her loss of faith seemed to produce a sort of miracle: something impossible came true. Lena the unwanted orphan was given what every single child here longed for with every breath…_a real family._

Every single one of her fellow orphans at St-Francis under the age of ten, whether they admitted it or not, had a _story_. Call it a dream, a wish, a fantasy, a hope, a delusion or a prayer; it was all the same thing. It was that thing that lulled every one of those little boys and girls to sleep every night and that kept the forced smiles on their faces during the day.

Everyone one of the little boys and girls….everyone _except _little Lena of course.

The dream was always some version of the same story: a family with a successful and "cool" father, ranging from tech-millionaires, famous athletes, politicians, movie stars, aristocrats, socialites, rock stars and a bunch of others according to the orphan's personal preference in books, magazines or movies. Then there was the mother: a warm kind of beautiful like in the movies, tears in her eyes as she took in her long-lost child, all followed by some kind of hallmark reunion moment and the return to their _real home_. A few liked to throw in a sibling or two for variety: an older brother to protect, guide and look out for them; a little sister to admire them and who _they_ could guide and protect.

And then came her personal favourite: _the twist_. The _reason _why instead of being doted upon by their loving and _wealthy _(naturally) family, they'd gotten stuck in this hell, getting struck on the knuckles for being two minutes late for Morning Prayer. Because it could never be that they simply hadn't been _wanted_, oh no, not them, _they _were _special_. So there had to be good a reason for their family to have abandoned them like this. Those reasons varied from international espionage, Romeo and Juliet sort of love affairs, political and social scandals, fleeing royalty, government conspiracies…the really nutty ones involved aliens sending them away from their home planet to save them and pods landing on Earth (I mean _really?_ Aliens?).

All of the stories were slightly different, some kids believed in them more than others and the older kids who had stopped believing in theirs (or at least pretended to) mocked them for it, called them naïve and fools; but they all had one. All except Lena.

This was because the little girl knew that she'd already had her perfect life, her perfect family, her perfect best friend…her perfect mum…_and Lena killed her_. She didn't want or _deserve _another and would never let herself believe otherwise.

So you can imagine her surprise when, of all the children in all of the children's homes in Metropolis, it just so happened that the story she was the only one _not_ to believe in…actually came true, _for her_.

He appeared one day with his chauffeur in a luxurious car: tall, bald and clad in an expensive suit. He walked with confidence and determination, like someone important. He spoke to the nuns for only a half an hour and then Lena was called into the Matron's office.

She'd thought she was getting punished again, turns out, she was here to meet _her father _(later, she would wonder if those two things were one and the same).

Lionel Luthor he said his name was, she'd heard the name before of course, everyone had. He was her father he said. She was suspicious, her mother had never said his name (but then she had refused to show her pictures or even to talk of her father…but hadn't there been that time when he was on television and her mom got so angry for no reason?) and she didn't see much of herself in him, except maybe for the eyes…But _he _had pictures, of him and her mother from long ago, from "before you were born" he said. Her mum had looked happy and _so young_. He told her that he'd loved her mother, she was suspicious. He told her that he loved _her_, she was afraid.

But Lionel Luthor wanted his bastard daughter, so his bastard daughter he got. Lena went home with him on that very day, her tiny little suitcase clutched in her trembling hands. No one ever once asked her if she wanted to go.

She didn't say goodbye to anybody. First of all, none of them had really been her friends but most of all, she knew that they wouldn't want to see _her_. She was getting what every one of them had wished for their entire life. There would be only bitterness and jealousy there, she knew that. She did make a stop by the Matron's office though, just as she was about to leave. The little girl hadn't said a word, not one, she had just fixed her luminous, _unnatural_ green eyes on the aged nun and for once, didn't look away. Because she no longer _had _to. Her lips simply curved into an enigmatic little smile when she was done, and left that life behind. His father watched his daughter from behind, an eerily similar smile on his face.

The Matron would think about those eyes and that little smile everyday till the day she died.

And so…in yet _another _life-changing day in the life of a girl that was only five, everything changedonce again.

Lena was brought to her new home that just so happened to be a _mansion,_ and was introduced to her new "family": her "new mother" Lillian and her "new brother" Lex. They'd been playing chess together in the "drawing room" (which was apparently a _thing_, she would later learn).

She'd seen the hate and contempt that had been Lillian's instinctive reaction to her unexpected presence before she schooled her features. But Lena had caught it, eyes too much like the Matron, this woman didn't know her but believed her to be "lesser" in some way. She'd learned to recognize the look.

But Lex…oh how she missed the way Lex used to be. In her half-brother, she had only seen warmth, curiosity and acceptance, more than in their cold and aloof father even. _He_ was the one who made her believe for the very first time that this could be her family too. For better or worse.

He gave her a tour of the "house" that was actually about the same size as the orphanage (only it housed a thousand less people) and that included such beauty, history and so much obvious wealth that she felt so small, and unworthy standing next to it all. Only Lex's hand in hers kept her moving forward into the lion's den. The mansion included rooms like the aforementioned "drawing room", a music room, three libraries of varying sizes, multiple studies and leisure rooms, a reception hall, a dining hall, a gallery, a solarium, a number of guest rooms in their own unique styles, a conservatory, a gymnasium, a pool, a billiards room, dressing rooms and extensive gardens. Not to mention the servant's quarters and little things like multiple kitchens and bathrooms.

The threadbare clothes she'd been given at St Francis were taken from the side of her bed when she woke up the first morning and never reappeared. What did appear however, was an entire wardrobe filling her _walk-in closet_ (for real) containing dozens upon dozens of outfits all at the height of elegance even for a little girl (and perfectly sized she suspected, now realizing what that embarrassment seance with the tailor taking her measurements had been all about).

Her closet was in her new room. Decorated in greens and light brown woods, every piece of furniture spoke of wealth and taste that was both completely alien to her and at the same time _just right_. She loved her room.

After meeting and being intimidated by the staff (the concept of people having to do what _she_ told _them_ instead of the other way around was still a little jarring) and getting a mere two days to get settled in, her new life began in earnest.

It started on the third morning when she was given practically an entire day's worth of the strangest tests, reams and reams of them, all under the watchful eye of one of the staff. There were math questions, English questions, logic questions, science questions; peculiar exercises involving shapes, drawing, colours or memory. It all felt very pointless to Lena, especially as every question was just _so easy_, but her father had been there before she went in and told her that this was "important" in a grave voice. She felt sure it was some kind of task she had to accomplish if she wanted to stay in this nice house with her nice clothes and with Lex, so little Lena applied herself and did her very best.

It had taken her nearly six hours of gruelling writing, every test she ended was followed by another then another, but then she was finally done. Her father had already been long gone by then and Lillian had merely whispered an ominous "_we shall see now_" before leaving her to her own devices. Nobody told her if she'd passed or failed or anything and it kept her up all night.

The next day, her father was there at breakfast (a rarity since he often left with the dawn) and actually got up from his customary morning paper, coffee and "silence" to walk up to her and hug her. It was maybe the third hug she'd ever received from her father, the first being on the very day she met him.

"I _knew _you were _mine_" he whispered in her ear in a tone he might have meant as proud but only came out as possessive. And then he just left for work for the day.

Across from her, she could see Lillian's eyes staring daggers into her own. Guess she must have passed.

After that, began her education.

For the next few years this would mean isolation and _tutors, _many, many tutors. She was more or less confined to the house with the family and staff as her only human connections.

She'd had the best tutors and instructors money could buy: everything necessary to transform her from an orphaned waif from the slums of Metropolis to a girl worthy of carrying the Luthor name. Those included, tutors in: academics of all kinds (from maths, science, grammar, history, etc.), music, etiquette, art, business, languages, sports, speech (really), and many more besides, skills a woman in your position will need said Lillian. She had hours upon hours of lessons and training with very little time to herself. The teachers came and went like the weather with Lena expected to learn everything they had to teach and move on to the next.

For perhaps any other little girl, it would have been an arduous nigh impossible task to survive in this shark pit she had been dropped in and expected to navigate without knowing how to swim. Not to mention, having to suffer having her worth tested every hour of everyday: during her first few years with the family (and still now sometimes) she'd been convinced that her "lessons" were actually _tests _and that failing at any one of them in the slightest would get her sent straight back to the orphanage (or so had intimated Lillian anyway).

But Lena was no normal little girl, she was a Luthor. Everything they threw at her, she not only passed or succeeded, she _excelled_ at. Every tutor, every teacher every expert that left the room after his first lesson spent teaching Lena Luthor was left in a state of awe. She heard words like "genius" or "prodigy" through the door when they gave their report to her mother, but Lillian never said such words to her.

Her father was more or less a non-issue as he barely spent any time at home whatsoever, always off on some business trip or other, or at the office. His absence was deeply felt in every corner of the house though. The few times she saw him were in passing or on the rare occasions when he was home for dinner and she was expected to call him "father" or "sir" and the whole conversation between the "family" was stilted and filled with tension.

There was the even rarer occasion though, when Lionel would take her into his office, pour himself a glass of scotch and just _ask about her_. How she was doing with her studies, if she was eating well, if there was something she wanted that she didn't have, those sorts of things. Fatherly things.

Her dad was clearly uncomfortable in this position of "doting father" he was going for (something he definitively wasn't with Lex) and it showed, but Lena loved him all the same. He _cared_, that was enough. He would also, very, very rarely, talk of her mother sometimes, but only when he'd had one too many and never at her urging. In fact, that was one the "rules" that had been established before she'd even stepped foot in the mansion: no mention of her mother, of her life before she came here at all actually, _ever_.

Lillian, or "mother", had taken to avoiding as much she could almost from day one, which suited Lena just fine, but she had also counselled Lex to avoid her, which bothered Lena a lot. And when they did have to interact, Lillian was always ready with a clever and cutting remark to remind Lena of _her place_ (that is, when they were alone of course, she would never dream of speaking that way to her "darling daughter" in front of her husband or son).

Luckily, Lex tended to ignore his mother when it came to this particular rule and made it a point to spend some time with his new little sister. Which was a good thing, because Lex had become her new favourite person. He was the only one who didn't treat her like a porcelain doll, a stain on his family or as "Miss Luthor"; to Lex, she was just Lena.

That's not to say that Lex was the perfect brother by any means. Even as a teenager, (especially as a teenager) could be arrogant and mercurial, switching between the cold aloofness of their father and a short, sometimes even cruel, temper. He also had the natural disdain that the whole family seemed to have for "sentimental displays".

But she _was_ a Luthor, and to Lex, that meant she was worthy of his time and attention at the very least. And so when he was home from boarding school, in between her many tutoring lessons, Lex would come to her and they would play a game and just…hang out and talk. Like any brother and sister would. Lena loved those moments and those were the times she liked to think about when thinking about Lex _now_.

After her first victory at chess that day that he claimed was just "beginner's luck", Lex took it upon himself to school her in chess, Shogi and Go in the same way he himself had been (very rarely he said), taught by their father. Lena excelled at the strategy games with an almost preternatural ability to spot patterns and predict moves that she wasn't sure was making Lex jealous or proud (because, he'd never said it, but she had feeling that she was learning faster than he had been at her age).

Those games defined a lot of her relationship with Lex over the years. Lena eventually understood that if she wanted to have her brother interested in and proud of her, it had to come from feats of intellectual prowess. Those were always what drew Lex in: when she did what other kids couldn't do, when she proved herself extra-ordinary; such as playing Chopin's Etude in G# minor flawlessly after only two weeks of practice (not realizing that most people practiced for _years_ without ever reaching her level), playing with those long string of numbers Lex called equations and making them _fit _just right, or learning to read and write computer code at the same time and with same ease as she was learning French and Russian.

When she did those things, all to impress Lex, she would sometimes be rewarded by a rare and fleeting proud smile on his face and he would ruffle her hair affectionately, called her his "little Lena" and would agree to read to her while they drank hot chocolate with marshmallows (she had tried to get him to watch movies with her but Lex had drawn the line there and would only agree if he could read the classics).

Little Lena had _lived_ for those moments. Moments that got rarer and rarer until they stopped altogether. She would try to recreate them as she got older, inventing devices and writing proofs that were sure to impress her brother so they might regain their former closeness but she never truly succeeded.

Eventually came the time for her rejoin the outside world and to go to her first boarding school (but certainly not the last), as seemed to be the educational norm in the Luthor family. Lionel being far too busy to look after his children and Lillian having no desire to do so, especially for "that little bastard" as she once heard her mother call her to her father while Lena was hiding in a corner.

And so, little Lena, the scared, clever and guilt-ridden little orphan grew into Lena Luthor, a brilliant, beautiful and confident young woman.

Her angelic child's loveliness grew into fine aristocratic features that were the envy and desire of men and women alike, her child's body grew in size and sensuous curves: milk-white skin, flowing raven hair and the same luminous green eyes that seemed to see through everything and everyone. Everyone agreed that Lena Luthor was a true beauty.

The remarkable potential she had shown as an infant was sharpened, honed and refined into one of the most brilliant minds of her generation. The guilt was still there though.

Her father, forever absent but still with the random moments of kindness and intimacy. Her "mother", forever lurking and critiquing with the occasional burst of true motherly wisdom. Her brother, transforming from a shy and brilliant teenager into a confident, ruthless and genius business-man and scientist; graduating MIT at 16 and basically running the R&D of Luthor-Corp since he was 20 (and not out of nepotism either, if anything Lionel was _harder_ on Lex than anybody else but her brother's intellect could not be denied).

Still, in this strange little family, as the years went by, Lena occupied a very peculiar position.

Hated by her mother, her ever-elusive father's "favourite" and being either ignored or doted upon by Lex.

But in the public eye, she was something of a ghost.

While the media was aware of the fact that Lena Luthor in fact _existed_ and was legally recognized by her father as a Luthor (such things were public record), there existed a veritable black hole of information surrounding her. None of the three publicly recognizable Luthors had ever confirmed or denied her existence in the media, they'd never even said her name. Unlike Lex who had yearly professionally taken pictures for press and PR purposes since he was a child himself, Lena never had her picture taken and the only ones the media had ever gotten were wide-lens shots from hundreds of yards away of a black-haired girl who could have been anybody. The Luthors had already been fanatical about their privacy and actively financed their own paranoia with the help of the world's most expensive security firms, but at Lionel's urging, they took it up even another notch where Lena was concerned. Her father had been absolutely adamant and industrious in keeping her from the public eye since the very first day he took her home from the orphanage. Lena had never known exactly why, sure there were the obvious reasons: she was the bastard child of a married and preeminent businessman and Lillian was obsessed with maintaining the family "good name". Those were certainly reason enough to keep her hidden, but her father's constant insistence on it, sometimes bordering on the irrational, had actually caused a few arguments between him and Lex. Her brother had refused to act like he was ashamed of his brilliant little sister and didn't want to hide her away; and she had loved him so for that, but her father had never budged. It had deeply bothered her at times while growing up, believing like Lex did that her father was ashamed of her (Lillian certainly was and wasn't shy about letting her know), but she had also found herself enjoying her anonymity more and more as she grew up. After all, she might be the only female multi-billion heiress in the world without a single picture of her in the press, or the accompanying slew of paparazzi.

The boarding schools Lena went to actually made teachers, parents and students sign non-disclosure agreements about the names and location of any student in the school. It was also better guarded than the white-house.

As for social media, not only had Lena been told time and again to avoid it, she also quickly realized that her father must have hired some kind of tech expert because any time she accidently showed up in her friend's Facebook page or was caught in the background, her face just blurred or she disappeared entirely. She'd even tested it herself, she'd taken a picture of herself and put it on the internet…it and the copy she had on her own computer, had disappeared in under minute. I Mean damn, who did her dad, have working for him, the NSA?

It was certainly proving to be a godsend for a current situation, that she was certain would have never been possible without it.

It had also been a very welcome relief when Lionel Luthor died in a car explosion when she was fifteen and the family was put under worldwide intense scrutiny for weeks. Lena had been in boarding school in Japan at the time and Lillian didn't even allow her to come to the funeral.

So now, Lena found herself more thankful than ever with that aspect of her life that her father had fought so vehemently for. Privacy was perhaps the only thing in the world that the wealthy could _not_ truly buy (by virtue of being wealthy and therefore interesting to _somebody_), but Lena had both. She had been a legally recognized child of Lionel Luthor when he'd perished and while he did leave the company to Lex (not that she would have wanted it or even could have handled it), he practically cut his personal wealth in half and bequeathed one to each of his children, making her an actual billionaire before the age of eighteen with one stroke of the pen. Lillian (who had received a considerably more modest inheritance) had been beside herself with rage and had tried everything short of having her killed to gain access to Lena's money but had never managed it.

Despite the fact that, since he learned of her existence when her father brought her back from the orphanage that first day, Lex must have realized he might have just lost half of his future inheritance (Lillian most assuredly did), he was always there for her when she was little and never once made her feel as if she had taken anything away from him. If anything, he appeared absolutely delighted to have a new little sister to dote upon and protect and who would look up to him in admiration. Lex may not have been a perfect brother, he was quick-tempered, arrogant, selfish and she had witnessed his cruel and sometimes even sadistic streak (he got that from their father); but she had always known he loved her, that _she _at least, was special to him.

Lena had feared that her brother might resent her for the inheritance though (like his mother did, it was _a lot_ of money), but he never appeared to, not even a little. Of course, Lex quickly proved he had no need of her money and was more than capable of making his own. He took the empire that their father had spent his entire life building and immediately started playing very fast, very loose, and very _big_, on the market and he _won_.

Lex doubled the price of shares of the company in under a year of being CEO. Lex had done so by playing the stock-market like a music-conductor with ridiculous ease but mostly by managing the genius move of establishing himself as the first and foremost supplier of weapons and technology to practically the entire United States military and Intelligence apparatus (along with other militaries as well, but the US would only find out about _that_ much later) after Wayne Enterprises had pulled out of the Defence field entirely when his old boarding schoolmate Bruce Wayne took back control of his family company after his seven year "sabbatical". Lex had been the very first to react to the insane business move that no one had seen coming even a little bit (_no one_ in business willingly let go of such insanely lucrative exclusive contracts that the company had held for decades, it was unheard of, people _had_ and _did_ kill for those), and he jumped into the gap before anyone else, ruthlessly snatching just about every contract Wayne Enterprises had just let go of in a matter of hours.

And then he took it further, allowing his R&D to push the fringes the way Wayne Enterprises had never dared and with the government voluntarily closing its eyes hoping for better weapons and to stay relevant in a world where technology was expanding at terrifying speeds. After he personally created a number of terrifying new weapons and technology for the military (they had a growing meta-human problem), he had gained their trust and in the next few years he used his newly acquired government contracts and contacts to launch his business into the stratosphere. Genius move after genius move, the company expanded and diversified more than ever, although almost always in the tech, bio or com sectors, spreading _everywhere_.

After that, whenever the government was faced with a technological or scientific problem that their thousands of scientists and dozens of think-tanks couldn't solve, they would throw it to Lex. And that is where her brother's genius truly began to shine, his brilliant yet highly unconventional way of thinking (many would call it amoral) and his now-endless resources allowed him to solve some of the country's toughest problems and mysteries, this led to many advances and benefits for the U.S government and, naturally, Lex-Corp along with it. Lex only had one rule, well aside from getting paid a truly outrageous sum of money, and that rule was simple: no oversight. He agreed to tackle all of those projects too sensitive or complex for the government on the condition that he would have complete freedom to do his work. That included freedom from ethics and senate appropriations committees and the mutual understanding that had long worked for the military of: don't ask, don't tell.

The government promised not too look too closely as to _how_ exactly Lex achieved his results, just so long as he achieved them. And he _did_, in spades.

Lex had managed in just less than five years, what their father had spent his entire life sweating, bleeding and breaking his back for. He had reclaimed their family's long lost and squandered legacy and name. He had become one of the big ones; not just rich, famous and powerful, those came and went according to the market, no Lex had done something more, he had become an _institution_. The name of Luthor now once again stood alongside Wayne, Queen, or Teague; just as it had in the past and the way it was always meant to. This wasn't about only about money and power for Lex (well, not entirely), this was also about respect, pride. The respect he'd wanted from the father who ignored him, from peers who ridiculed him, from the media who used to mock him. This was the reason Lex had been so close to his mother…and to her she remembered wistfully.

His success is probably why Lex was never bothered by the will. It says something about who you are when you can find a multi-billion dollar inheritance paltry and superfluous to your success and turn out to be right. No matter her feelings for her brother, one that would never go away was respect for his intellect and sheer willpower. She only wished he could have put them to better use; aside from her personal feelings, it felt like such a _waste_ to see such genius as she knew her brother had, disappear into madness and megalomania. Lex could have done _so much good_ for the world, Lena was sure of it, if he had only _wanted _to. The heart-breaking part of course being that _he didn't_.

When she'd been fifteen and during one of her long rants to Lex about how _easy_ school was and how stupid she found her peers, he had, in a spur of the moment decision, decided to give her a bunch of random aptitude tests, most of them focusing on maths (her best subject by far). She blew through them in a couple of hours and found them all too _easy _as well, if a tiny bit more challenging. As her reward, when her brother read her results, he gifted her with one of the brightest smiles she could ever remember getting from him and proclaimed her a true genius and a _true Luthor. _There were very few times she could remember feeling more proud, especially since their father had died not long ago. This was followed by talk of pulling her out of boarding school and enrolling her into college early as she very obviously had the intellect for it. Lex had wanted her to go to MIT early like he did and revealed that the "mock-test" he had given her was actually the entrance exams for the school. When she scored in the top 3%, he had seemed so arrogantly delighted that the two youngest candidates to have been accepted into the most prestigious technical college in the world in the last decade were _both_ Luthors.

It had been her step-mother who put a stop to that idea. She claimed it was all done for her "beloved daughter's" protection and well-being, that her identity would surely get out if she were to take centre-stage like this. Of course, Lena knew that the real reason Lillian didn't want her to follow in Lex's footsteps was because she just couldn't stand the idea of _anyone_ surpassing her precious and _rightful_ son, especially not some "half-Luthor".

Lex and Lillian actually argued for quite a bit about that. It was not long after her father had died and Lex had taken over Luthor-Corp, renaming it Lex-Corp (which was _a_ _bit much_ in her opinion, but she understood why he did it, Lex's relationship with their ominous father had been nothing like her own).

But for once, as the tie-breaker, she was able to make the decision for herself and to the surprise of all; she decided to stay in her age-group in high-school. Genius she may have been, she was also a teenage girl after all and for her, having friends and fitting in at school was way more important than the nebulous future and success her brother talked about. Because, while she would have _loved_ to finally be challenged in her classes, she feared being labelled a "freak" even more, and she just knew that's what awaited her if she showed up at college as the 15 years old bastard Luthor girl: mocked, ostracized, spied upon…_alone._

What her brother had never known, because she wasn't about to tell him, was that the main reason she didn't want to go to college early and be inevitably treated as a Luthor, was because of him. She loved her brother, but she saw how lonely, isolated and angry he slowly became. She had seen it as he joined MIT at 15, always alone because his peers were both several years older than him, and intimidated by his last name. That was the _real_ reason Lena didn't want to follow in her brother's footsteps. She didn't want to become as unhappy as she knew he was.

She started seeing Lex a lot less after that. As he took the reins of Lex-Corps and quickly pushed it to even greater heights than ever before, he became a very busy man. He'd taken their father's death harder than any of them, despite (or maybe because of) the very contentious relationship they'd had. And also…he never said it in so many words but he was disappointed in her and her choice to put her social life over her ambitions (probably because this was something he'd never actually done himself and therefore couldn't recognize in others), it felt like she had lost some of his respect and it hurt her rather badly at the time.

Lex had always been so different with her than he was with anybody else, so much so that it took her _years _to understand why so many seemed to fear her brother. Her dad, she understood, he _was_ scary, but Lex? Except, eventually she came to realize that the beloved brother she adored so, had a vindictive, selfish, arrogant and _sadistic_ streak (she recognized that one from Lillian) a mile wide that he'd exercised freely on the staff in a number of subtle and highly convoluted way that she'd never even been aware of (she did remember how all the servants had been afraid of him and how she could never understand why). She even remembered hearing rumours once that he had pushed and manipulated his roommate at boarding school into killing himself and that was why he had been pulled out of that one boarding school that time. She hadn't believed them _then_. She did _now_.

By that time she barely ever saw Lex anymore, workaholic and loner that he was, as he hardly ever bothered with any kind of "family time" that didn't have an ulterior motive. But she still loved and admired him like any little sister loved her big brother. And how could she not be proud of him when she saw his face on the cover of Forbes, Wired or the Daily Planet with captions like "Man of the Year" or "Luthor's winning streak continues". It seemed to her that for every professional success her brother managed, he lost a small part of himself; until bit by bit, she hardly recognized him anymore.

Despairingly, over the years after their father's death, she had watched as her intense, wilful and smart big brother became increasingly erratic and unstable, how his outlook and philosophy became radical, dogmatic and violent and filled with so much _hate_ all of the time. Her brother may have loved _her_, but he hated everyone else, and she had never been able to reconcile those two facts.

The last few years, she no longer looked forward to his visits. The brother that she had loved and respected so much growing up had turned into this stranger. A stranger that, she was ashamed to admit it, scared her.

_And it was all Superman's fault._

Well, she knew it wasn't his fault _really_, but a part of her couldn't help but blame the mythical alien superhero for her brother's descent into madness. Because that's when it had started, or at least that was when she'd first noticed the very real madness in Lex's eyes. Oh, it had been brewing for years, her brother had straddled the fine knife's edge between genius and madness for as long as she'd known him. But it had been the arrival of the Kryptonian that had pushed him over, she knew that for a fact.

After the dramatic first appearance of the alien on earth; she, like everyone else, had quickly become entranced by the kind and beautiful visitor from another world who had come to save them in their hour of need. And of course, like every other girl on the planet, she had tiny crush on him (despite the fact that she'd found herself looking a bit _too_ closely at her girlfriends changing in the locker room lately).

When she had first mentioned her admiration for the superhero to her brother, he didn't react like she'd expected. He went into a very long rant that she only half-followed, even as smart as she was, switching from biology, to philosophy, sociology and quantum mechanics. It was an enraged and maddened rant that lasted over an hour in which her brother threw expensive knickknacks against the walls while he explained that he was convinced that Superman was the beginning of the end for the human race. He had a very long and convoluted explanation for that but Lena had never agreed with it (or even understood it really). He seemed to take the alien's every action as a personal affront to him and started to become obsessed with proving his superiority over the man of steel. It was in this that she recognized their father's poisonous words echo in her brother's voice, whispering to him that a Luthor must always be on top, always in control, always the most powerful no matter the situation or the enemy. That poison made it so Lex couldn't stand the idea that there was someone out there with whom he couldn't even compete, to whom he was _inferior_. It was the first true sign of his madness she ever witnessed and the first time her brother truly _scared_ her. But far from the last.

So a part of her will always blame Superman, whose sheer presence and unreachable perfection had been enough to destroy her brother.

But, despite all of that, life had continued and Lena continued to grow until sh reached her final year of high school and she was forced to confront those decisions and expectations that had been haunting the back of her mind for _years_ now.

First, of course, was college, she had early acceptance letters from literally every single Ivy, and her school records would allow her entrance into any other college as well she was sure, so she could technically take her pick. Lex was still adamant on MIT however and had been slowly convincing her by sheer virtue that it _was_ an excellent school with excellent programs and she _needed_ something to occupy her brain. She was less convinced whenever he mentioned the future plans he had for her in various positions in the company after she was done and never once asked her if working with him was what she might want.

But there was another aspect to all of this and her impending legal majority that Lena dreaded even more. When she reached eighteen, Lena was expected to become a fully public and recognizable Luthor, including photo-ops and press interviews. She was to step out of the shadows after all this time and announce herself as a Luthor for all to see and Lena was terrified.

She didn't want to do it, but both Lex and Lillian were as adamant about it as Lionel had been in keeping her hidden and she knew this wasn't a fight she could win, it was only through Lex's continued money, connections and interference that she even _had_ her anonymity still.

But then, just a month before she finished high school, in what was becoming a trend for Lena, her entire world changed _once again_.

Her sweet brother Lex was arrested for enough crimes to potentially gain him 32 consecutive life-sentences and was currently sitting in a jail-cell in some super-max awaiting what had already been dubbed "The trial of the century".

His crime the attempted murder of one Superman and one Lois Lane, and coming closer to killing the invulnerable alien than anyone, ever. Oh, and also killing 1259 men, women and _children_ in the attempt.

The superhero had eventually stopped her villainous brother and saved the female reporter like in any good superhero tale, but her brother's schemes had taken a great number of lives already by the time it was over. Not long after her rescue, Lois Lane had published a scathing expose depicting the numerous illegal activities she claimed her brother and by extension Lex-Corp was involved in.

The FBI, under enormous external pressure, finally disregarded their deal with Lex and followed through and eventually started to peel back more and more unsavoury layers about her brother and the way he ran his "business" during the course of their investigation: illegal, untested and dangerous technology, immoral experiments, all manner of fringe science…It made her brother out to be some kind of evil Doctor Frankenstein. It made her ill to even think about it.

For his part, Lex seemed to have picked the "completely bat-shit crazy" strategy as his defence by appearing completely mad whenever she saw him: constantly spouting off complete nonsense about creatures from other worlds and the apocalypse to the media and during his trial (along with something that made even less sense, something about some Canadian 70s rock band, Stepwolf or Steppenbear or something equally ridiculous…Lex was now using "disco" as his defence). The most heart-breaking part was, she wasn't sure if this was just a strategy to avoid real jail by being judged "unfit to stand trial" (something her brother was more than smart enough to pull off she knew), or if her brother had truly succumbed to the madness she had always seen lurking behind his eyes, it certainly _looked real_ on television. The same madness she used to see in her father's eyes sometimes before he was killed in an "accident" when his car mysteriously exploded. The same madness she could see in her step-mother's eyes, despite the woman being a master at concealing any kind of real emotion.

Was it the same madness she saw when looking in the mirror? The Luthor curse? Genius and power on one hand, madness and evil in the other.

She could hardly deny the first part: Every teacher she'd ever had (except for her step-mother of course) in every discipline from art to maths to sports, had called her a prodigy and a genius, just like her brother. She picked up knowledge and skills with amazing speed, be it playing the piano, doing combinatorial mathematics, speaking German or doing a flying high-kick in Jujitsu. She'd been receiving early acceptance letters from prestigious colleges all over the world since she was fourteen. Everyone always said she was a genius, a prodigy and that used to make her proud but now she couldn't help but wonder if the coin was about to flip. After all, everyone had always called her brother a genius too, her father as well even and the both of them turned out to be evil men.

Did this mean that, like her father and brother before her, she was destined for madness? Was it in her blood?

Every day, the newspapers would publish some new horror Lex was supposedly responsible for, and the name of Luthor became associated with "evil", "criminal", and "mad". She tried to ignore it as much as she could, preferring to focus on memories of when they were young and those rare moments she'd had with Lex just the two of them acting like siblings.

Lena had adored her brother for that growing up and there was certainly a part of her that loved him still, that would most likely always love him, but that didn't mean she thought he was innocent either. No, Lex had done all of those things (and probably a lot more that nobody would ever find out about), he had hurt all these people, he had lied, cheated and killed, she was certain of it. All so he could kill Superman and he could finally prove, according to him, the superiority of Man over God. The fact that killing a God like Superman, would in turn make _him_ a God was never discussed. It was painfully clear from her side of the table; but she knew no words she could ever say that would reach him. She had tried them all before.

And ironically, the fall of her family into ignominy was the reason that Lena got to do what she truly wanted for once. She had argued with her step-mother that the plan to reveal herself as a Luthor was hardly feasible now and would gain them nothing so had to be put on hold (but not forgotten she was sure). In fact, her anonymity was now more important than ever. She told her mother that being close to any business, property or holding associated with the Luthor name would only draw attention to her in this time of extreme scrutiny for her family. So it only made sense for Lena to distance herself from the family and since she was an eighteen year old girl, the idea of sending her to college under a false name was really the most logical. After all, college was where eighteen year old girls were supposed to be.

Lena had been the one to suggest National City University. It was no MIT or Harvard like Lex had wanted, but she argued that she felt the need to get out from the world of high-brow academia she'd always known and meet a different kind of people and that going to an Ivy meant she was almost certain to run into someone she'd known in boarding school which could compromise her anonymity. Besides, their physics and maths programs were actually extremely good since National Labs wasn't far and many famous professors (some of them Nobel Prize laureates) who worked on projects there would periodically lecture or teach a class at the university; so she hoped she wouldn't be too bored with her classes.

The best part (and the real reason she decided to go here specifically) was that National City was both close enough to Metropolis that her step-mother wouldn't show her face there if she didn't want to be seen, and far enough that when she was in Metropolis legitimately (visiting Lex or the company and such…), Lena was far enough away not to be expected to visit her. She was basically using the scandal of her brother's arrest as a buffer and way to escape her mother for four years, as the old bird was even more afraid of scandal than she was fond of making her step-daughter's life miserable.

It had still been a _tough_ fight, convincing her step-mother Lillian to let her attend National City University as a regular student for the next four years. It had taken every tool in her considerable arsenal, and she had played every card and pulled every trick she knew: from blackmail, to business, to scandal, to family. She'd tried anything and everything because she just wanted it _so much_

It was made easier by the fact that, for now, Lillian was primarily focused on Lex's trial and keeping as much wealth and company assets out of the government's hands as possible and didn't have the time or inclination to pay too much attention to her. Which suited Lena just fine.

And it had worked! She had argued, blackmailed, cajoled, lied and held her ground and finally, her step-mother had relented and allowed her to enrol as Lena_ Davies_ in National City University for a double major in physics and mathematics.

This meant that Lena had managed to wrench out four years of freedom from her step-mother's grip, from the media, from her brother and their infamous last name, from anyone who might know her from her turbulent years of boarding school. Four years to just…be herself, to be _just_ _Lena_. Whoever that was.

Just Lena was excited to find out.

The first step, as she looked around at the bare walls of the simple college dorm room she'd been assigned and at the empty bed facing hers, was to meet her roommate. Of course, she'd had more than enough money to buy a place close to campus if she'd so desired but she had elected against it, deciding to be adventurous and try to meet new and different people rather than the money-hungry sharks and shallow trust-fund kids she'd known her whole life.

The ridiculously small size of the room, almost inexistent closet space and lumpy mattress had been almost enough to make her change her mind then and there. Lena didn't like to think of herself as spoiled or materialistic but after almost an entire lifetime of high-thread count Egyptian cotton sheets and walk-in closets bigger than this entire room, she had been forced to admit that her standards might be a tad "higher" than most people's. Of course, there had been a time in her life when her room had been even smaller and danker than this and when the mattress had the pointy edges of broken springs digging into her back every night and- **No! **_We don't think about _that_ place_. This room was fine, it was good. Everything was _fine_.

There remained one feature of the room she hadn't discovered yet, perhaps the most important one of all: _her roommate_.

Given what she knew of the typical teenage girl, she didn't have particularly high hopes, but Lena hoped it would at least be someone she could have an intelligent conversation with and not just some dumb blonde cheerleader-type obsessed with Justin Bieber and partying.

A few moments later, the door was forcefully pushed open and one Kara Danvers came crashing into the room and into her life in a flail of luggage, limbs and blond hair.

Lena palmed her face, this would be a _long_ year.

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End new chapter 1.

I've decided to shorten my chapters so my one big-ass chapter (because 20k a chapter was really too much) has now been divided in 3 but new content is coming soon.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

So yeah, if you've read this before and were expecting new content sorry but I'm just revamping a bit.

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_Kara Zor-El_

College!

She was finally in college! She could hardly stand it, she was so excited!

In this place of learning, this _National City University_, she would begin her new life. A life that was her own, not as a Danvers or as an El, not as a Kryptonian or as a human, a life as _just Kara_.

If only she knew who that was. But she was excited to find out.

She loved the Danvers family deeply and would forever be grateful to them, but the constant over-protection, especially from her big sister Alex, was really getting to her. Really, what did they think could possibly happen to _her_? She was more worried about _them_, they were all so very _breakable_.

So she was also quite glad to be out of the small town of Midvale where, despite the wide open spaces filled with nature that she'd loved, she'd always felt her every move was being scrutinized by all the nosy neighbours. And she was glad that she'd get a chance to discover who she was without Alex always whispering "be careful, trust no one" in her ear and giving frightening glares to anyone who came within three feet of her precious fragile little sister (who could bench-press a Mach truck with one hand).

She was also _very _glad to leave behind her peers at Midvale High. Here, nobody knew her, there was no one to call her _freak_ or _weirdo_. And she was _better_ _now_, better at pretending to be human. Things would be different here she promised herself.

During her first few months on the planet, she hadn't even known the language, much less the culture. Her obvious deficiencies in language and general knowledge, her naturally introverted nature, the fear of confrontation that had been profoundly ingrained into her by Kal and her adoptive parents due to her terrifying new _powers_, her lack of understanding of the most basic of social customs (and there was nothing _basic_ about the social pecking order in high school); all of these things had made her a prime target for bullies and mean girls during her high-school years.

No, high school had not been a particularly pleasant time for Kara, despite how much more in love with Earth and all of its beauty she became every day, she was starting to have serious misgivings about the humans that her cousin praised so much.

In hindsight, she had to admit that she _had_ probably appeared very weird to her classmates. But for someone who had to literally switch entire species and planets in just a few days (from her perspective), Kara thought she had done quite well.

But she was _better _now. She hadn't had any more problems with English in years, even the curses and the slang. She'd been thoroughly _educated_ on current pop culture by use of movie-nights, CDs and going through trashy magazines with her sister. She had a very decent and _normal_ wardrobe and she could spout off the most inane details of her cover story by heart. And she was _finally_ starting to get a handle on those "powers" of hers.

This time, Kara was determined to be as normal as possible, to _fit in_, to actually feel as if she belonged to this world; maybe she was hoping it would dull the constant ache in her heart at the loss of her own world.

Now where was her dorm-room? The older student outside with her clipboard that had looked a bad comment away from a full-blown mental breakdown had barked at her "Danvers, 407, Hall A. Next!".

And so here she was, on the fourth floor of Albert Hall in National City University, looking for her dorm-room and, she thought excitedly, her _roommate_. The idea of living day in/day out with someone who was, as of now at least, a complete stranger, was naturally frightening, for a dozen different reasons. The fact that she was secretly a super-powered alien from another galaxy wasn't even the scariest in her opinion, _what if her roommate didn't like her? _Thought she was a freak as well, like all those other kids? Her mom and sister had both insisted that she could get off-campus housing alone and that they would help pay for it but she'd categorically refused. Alex had practically had a coronary trying to convince her of the dangers of exposure. But she had held firm, she wanted to be a normal girl with a normal college experience. And that included living in the dorms with a roommate.

Oh, how she hoped they would get along. She had this image in her head of her roommate becoming her best-friend and confidante, she'd never had one of those before, apart from Alex but she didn't really count. She wanted someone that was just _hers_, that would be her friend because she liked her for _her_, not because she'd been dumped on her. Someone that would stay up at night with her talking about nothing and everything, someone that would look at her like she was normal, someone with whom she didn't feel so _alone_. And that was the real reason she'd insisted on dorm-housing despite the "security risk", because a roommate was like a built-in best friend wasn't it? She'd never been very good at making friends (on Krytpon either).

Ok, she was probably getting far too ahead of herself like she always did when she was excited, they hadn't even met yet. For that matter, she had yet to even find her dorm-room. She was still stumbling around the corridors, carefully avoiding all the other rushing students for fear they might break something by running into her and easily carrying her multiple bags.

"412…no…409…no…Ah! 407!"

This was it. The beginning of her new life. She wondered if her unknown room-mate for the next year was already inside so she strained her ear a tiny bit and heard a steady heart-beat in the other room.

She was here! Ok…show-time now. She remembered her sister's advice one last time. "Be friendly but not _too_ friendly like you get. Be calm. Be cool. But be yourself too. And above all…_be_ _normal_!"

Kara had really wanted to ask Alex how she was supposed to simultaneously _be herself_ and _be normal_ when _herself_ was someone who'd been born and raised on a different planet which was hardly _normal_, but she'd held her tongue.

That was something she wasn't sure _anyone_ quite understood when it came to her, not even Kal-Clark (urgh she hated that name), _especially_ not Clark. They all thought her problems adjusting to Earth stemmed from her abilities and how that set her apart from everyone else. And that was true, to some extent, but that had been _Clark's _main problem, not hers. She could feel it when she talked to her cousin, that little part of him that wanted desperately to be human. And so, for _him_, his biggest issue came from accepting the fact that he _wasn't_ human, and never would be, no matter how hard he tried and how much he pretended. But that was because Kal had grown up until adolescence under the belief that he actually _was_ human. He'd once told her that when he first found out where he truly came from, he did his damndest to ignore it for a long time. He _hated_ that part of himself that forced him to always be alone.

She could certainly empathize, but the thing was, Kara's problems weren't the same, at least not entirely. _She_ had been raised on Krypton, not _Kansas_, she remembered her planet and its magnificent crystalline landscapes that shimmered under the shade of their red sun into colours that didn't even _exist_ on this planet, she remembered her parents and Kal's real parents, she remembered their culture, their history, their arts, their achievements and their failings, their religion and so much more. Kara was Kryptonian, she had never believed herself human and she had never wanted to, not like Kal-Clark.

And that was why she truly felt so alone, despite having her cousin and her adoptive family. Because she truly felt like the last Kryptonian. Ironically, she knew that's what they called Kal: "The Last Son of Krypton" (which she guessed was true as she was a daughter but still), but the fact of the matter was, her cousin was far more human than he was Kryptonian and that was the way he liked it. He always seemed uncomfortable when she mentioned rites and traditions from their shared home planet, and shied away from her when she tried to teach him about their language and history. In truth, Kal often shied away from her, period. It was never obvious or overt and her cousin had never shown her anything but kindness but…she could still feel it and she had certainly seen it.

During the several years she had spent on Earth, she had actually spent a very short amount of that time with her only blood-relative, all things considered. Sure, Kal had helped her get a handle on her powers in the beginning and did seem genuinely happy not to be the only surviving Kryptonian anymore, but that was where it had stopped. She had expected to live with him, he was her family after all: he would teach her all about Earth and these strange changes to her biology that he called "abilities" and she could teach him about his lost heritage, one of the missions she had been sent with him to do but that she'd failed at so miserably. Despite him being an already grown and confident man in full control of his will and powers, there was still a part of her that heard Lara's pleading voice in her hear to "_Please, take care of my son_" and so she still felt deeply responsible for her younger/older cousin.

What she hadn't expected was the fact that Kal seemed decidedly uninterested in learning of his own culture and heritage, even mentions of his true parents were met with an uncomfortable silence. Kal, son of Lara and Jor-El, last Scion of the Great and Noble House of El, didn't _want_ to be Kal-El the Kryptonian, he wanted to be Clark Kent, son of Martha and Jonathan Kent, _human_.

He proved this for real when he announced his plan to place her with some friends of his, a "good family with good values" just like he had been, so she could learn to fit in at her own pace and had a family to teach, love and support her, just like he had. Basically, attempting to clumsily recreate his own upbringing. Kara had wanted to tell him that, unlike him, _she _remembered her real mother and father and knew they had loved her unconditionally; she didn't need or want a substitute. She'd also wanted to tell him that _he_ was her only real family now, so why couldn't _he_ take her in? If their roles had been reversed like they were meant to be in the beginning, she knew that _she_ wouldn't have hesitated for a second and in fact would have _insisted_ that her little cousin stayed under her guidance and protection. He had given her some speech about keeping her safe and how his role as Superman exposed him to constant danger and scrutiny and how he would never forgive himself if something happened to her. Again, she'd wanted to ask _what_ exactly did he think could happen to her, living in a world of glass inhabited by paper people as she was. And besides, he had Lois with him all the time, and she was publicly associated with both Clark Kent _and _Superman (she truly wondered how he still managed to remain anonymous). Certainly, she was in less danger than Lois and even if she were, again, so what? Nothing in this world could hurt her.

No, there was a much more simple reason why Kal had placed her with the Danvers and more or less washed his hands of her. He simply _didn't want her there_. She hadn't known why then, though she suspected it had something to do with his still on-going struggle to accept his true nature, but whatever the reason, it had _hurt…bad_. Her last remaining family wanted nothing to do with her and what he thought was "best", was to attempt to give her the exact same childhood that he had received, to suppress her Kryptonian side as much as possible, as he had.

It was a few years later, during one of the rare times that Kal had flown by the house to spend some time with her, that she understood the root of his actions and why he disdained all things Kryptonian so much.

They had been discussing General Zod and his failed attempt (thanks to Superman) to invade the Earth and use it to create a New-Krypton (she hadn't been there then, but even as much as she missed her world and would have loved to see it rise again, she could never condone the genocide of a entire sentient species to achieve that goal and she knew that she would have stood with her cousin against her fellow Kryptonians in that fight). Kal was being uncharacteristically open when he talked of the fallen General and the mix of dashed-hopes, disappointment and regret he had felt when meeting a fellow Kryptonian for the first time in his life and saw what he was like. And that was when she got it.

Kal not only disliked but was _afraid_ of his own people. Not even solely because of their abilities, but rather because he'd formed this image in his mind of Krypton as a cold, emotionless place; ruled by cold logic, arrogance, power over lesser beings and xenophobia. The sad fact was, he wasn't entirely wrong in his assessment either. But it also meant that he'd become convinced that Krypton only produced sociopaths.

And _that_ was why he'd pushed her away at first. _He didn't trust her_. He didn't trust her because, just like Zod and his exiled compatriots, she had been raised on Krypton and to him, that meant that she was potentially a monster without conscience. He didn't fear her because of her abilities, well not only, he feared her because, unlike him, she hadn't had any humans to "turn her good".

Kal-El hated his own people.

And that angered her. Sure, Zod had hardly been a good poster-child for Krypton (or sanity in general), but what right did Kal have to judge an entire people on the actions of one, and a convicted criminal at that? Krypton as a civilization had existed for _hundreds of thousands_ of years and had accomplished wonders upon wonders, creating far more than it ever destroyed. It was true that when she was born, during (what nobody knew except one genius scientist at the time) the last years of Krypton, their society had become stagnant and arrogant in practically every way, but that didn't erase their very long and glorious history and their countless achievements (but rather they fed it). Their arrogance didn't come from nowhere after all, there was a time when the Kryptonian Empire ruled supreme and benevolent over their galaxy, before they'd turned inwards. Yet, Kal-El had but a few glimpses of the worst of Kryptonian society and judged them _all_ to be megalomaniac sociopaths? And he thought the human race was _better_?

Not long after "waking up", she'd started studying the history of the people whose planet she now shared using their centralized communications network called the _internet_, and she had been absolutely _horrified_ by what she found: by the sheer amount of violence, cruelty and destruction that the humans routinely unleashed on one other for the most petty of reasons. And she wasn't even talking about their exceptionally bloody past (Krypton had its own after all), but what was happening on Earth _right now_. To her, it had been inconceivable to think that at the exact same moment, on the same planet, sometimes on the very same _street_, some humans lived in absolute safety and luxury while others lived in squalor and suffered and struggled to survive day to day…and that everyone seemed to find this state of affairs _perfectly normal_.

And even in _peaceful_ and _civilized_ countries, such as she'd been told America was, Rao, _the __crime_! The horrors that humans could and did perpetrate on one another, and so routinely? Murder, torture, rape, abuse…the list went on. And this country was considered to be one of the pinnacles of modern society and civilization, she didn't even want to imagine the state of affairs in those poor countries she'd seen on their viewing screen, urgh, _television _she meant! And again, _everyone_ knew it was happening and seemed to find the situation perfectly natural and went about their lives. She just couldn't understand it, couldn't understand _them_.

Those kinds of things hadn't happened on Krypton for _centuries_: antisocial and violent tendencies could be identified, isolated and purged from the DNA and brain chemistry of a child before it was even born (usually). Of course, that had its drawbacks too, her uncle Jor-El often decried those kind of pre-natal manipulations and the obsession that Kryptonians had with keeping their bloodlines "pure". But it still meant that crime had been more or less non-existent on Krypton, the same went for hunger and poverty. Her home planet may not have been the utopia it had liked to pretend it was to the rest of the galaxy it was true, but they had been _civilized_ to an extent that the humans had a long way to go to reach.

But her cousin either didn't want to know or didn't believe her when she spoke of it, and really, what could she expect? Kal liked to say often and loudly that Superman was just a costume and that he was really just a regular guy from rural Kansas. And it turned out, that was true. Because regular guys from Kansas had never seen the seven shining towers of Argos City, the great walls of New Kandor or the vast frozen ocean of Solitude; they had never paid homage to Rao, never felt proud to wear the ancient and revered symbol of the House of El. And neither had Clark Kent. She had come here to protect her little cousin but she had failed and slept for 24 years. She could now see that he had been happy, safe and loved and she was _so_ very, very glad for that; but she could also see that Kal-El didn't exist anymore and in his place stood Clark Kent: an excellent human by all accounts, and if people knew of his extracurricular activities they would call him a _great_ one, and Clark Kent was all of those things, including _human_, and that broke her heart.

But enough of these maudlin thoughts, time for some positive attitude! She had a roommate to meet and a new chapter of her life to begin!

She dug out the key she'd been given at the Admission's Office and started to wiggle it in the lock of door 407 when she _heard _someone come barrelling towards her in the narrow corridor. A quick glance informed her that it was some tall and muscular dark-skinned boy (who was clearly on the wrong floor seeing as he was _a boy_) carrying a such a huge amount of boxes and luggage in front of him as to block his sight, and advancing quickly, expecting everyone else to move out of his way. Kara was still struggling to open the lock, her key seeming to be stuck and she got progressively more frantic as the boy continued his rapid approach through the crowded hallway. She could already see it, he would run right into her and probably break his clavicle (this had happened before) and she'd be labelled a freak on her _very __first_ _day _of college. This could _not_ happen, not now! She continued to wriggle the key in the lock as gently as she could, terrified she might break the fragile metal with her strength, as the guy kept getting closer and closer. And _finally_, just as he was about to collide with her and she had been debating whether or not to super-speed, the lock popped open and she bodily threw herself into the room, avoiding the boy narrowly…and landing on her hands and knees with her glasses, hair and bags flying everywhere.

_Great entrance Kara, way to make a good first impression_ she thought, filled with embarrassment as she looked up to take in the girl she would share a room with for the next year.

Kara's first thought upon seeing her new roommate, aside from embarrassment…was that she looked _incredibly_ like a Kryptonian (like a _very __beautiful_ Kryptonian). Most people would say that humans and Kryptonians look exactly the same and for the most part they do, but there were still some subtle differences that came from having DNA strands fifty times more complex than humans. A tendency for the various inherited DNA traits to harmonize in the most optimal way possible. In a purely _aesthetic _sense this almost always translated in what humans would call "beauty" nowadays: sharp and symmetrical features, brilliant eyes, perfectly proportioned body, and a complete absence of all those little individual features humans called flaws. It was simply the way that their DNA worked, the "best" traits were always dominant. She had it, her cousin Kal had it, and…so did this girl.

Everything about her, from her silky raven hair, her supple yet athletic form, her almost glowing green eyes, her perfect aristocratic features, to her flawless, porcelain white skin; even the way she was seated or raised a single regal eyebrow in surprise exuded poise, elegance and control; all of these were deeply Kryptonian characteristics. For a moment she truly wonders if she just found another survivor of her people, _and such a beautiful one at that_. Hell, this girl looked more Kryptonian than _she_ did right now.

And then…something perhaps not entirely unexpected happened. Her X-Ray vision (as Kal calls it) activated by itself with the lead-lined glasses she usually wore to prevent it currently sitting on the floor instead of her nose. Only, for the very first time in her life, her sight didn't completely overwhelm her. She didn't start seeing through _everything_, her vision didn't shift from microscopic details to things dozens of miles away. It was focused, stable and she was seeing _selectively_ through specific surfaces and materials and not others, just like Kal said he was able to do. She had just mastered this power in this moment. Kal used that power to locate lost little children trapped in burning buildings. Only Kara's focus wasn't on saving orphans from a fire or stopping bank robbers, no she had another focus entirely. And that focus was… the girl currently sitting primly in front of her; and the material that her eyes had suddenly decided to ignore (for some unknown reason)…was the other girl's _clothes_, _all_ of her _clothes_.

_That's right_, she was currently seeing her roommate completely _stark-naked, _and yet, wasn't seeing through her skin and bones (something she'd never been able to do before). Which was a very good thing she decided instantly, because she had such lovely skin. In fact, she had lovely and beautiful and succulent…_everything_. Kara had the vaguest sense that she should turn away now but she just couldn't find it in herself to care faced with such a sight. That is, until the heat that had spread from her belly all the way in between her thighs and unfurled throughout her entire body finally reached her _eyes _and she felt them start to prickle then burn. _Oh Rao! She was going to…_She quickly clenched her eyes shut before her heat vision decided to activate next.

Kara had almost vaporized her roommate within a 30 seconds of meeting her…and saw her naked. She wasn't sure which of these events freaked her out the most.

Unfortunately, she realized as she slipped her glasses back on, all of this meant that from her roommate's point of view, after Kara had come crashing into the room and fell on her hands and knees, she'd stayed there drooling like a fool, staring at the brunette far longer than was probably appropriate. _What a great start, I nearly incinerated my roommate and she most likely already thinks I'm some kind of retard, really _great job_ there Kara._

She quickly got back to her feet and attempted to smooth over her rumpled clothes, hair and ego but she couldn't look her new roommate in the eye. Her mind was still full of the tantalizing vision she'd just witnessed and she was sure her skin was beet-red already.

Faced with this incredibly uncomfortable moment, she fell back on her tried and true method…babbling.

"Uhmm…Hi! I'm _so_ sorry about all…that. There was this guy with his bags and he just kept coming and he was going to hit me and the door was stuck and then…well, you saw. I promise I'm not always this clumsy! I'm like…cool. Well, not like _cool_ cool. I was just saying I'm not - and I just realized that you probably can't just call _yourself_ cool. Friends have to call you that, don't they? I guess my not knowing that means that I'm really _not_ cool, I was just…trying to be I guess?But I'm sure you already figured that out…And I'm babbling. I do that. I babble when I'm nervous. I'm not even sure what _cool_ even means! But my sister said I should "_be_ _cool_ when meeting new people", and I guess I've already ruined that and-"

"Lena" said a languid and smooth like whiskey voice, thankfully interrupting her full-on babble-fest. Her beautiful roommate was still sitting elegantly on her small one-person bed and managing to make it look like a throne, but she was looking at her with a slight smile on her lips. And not a cruel smirk like she was used to seeing on the faces of the mean-girls (as Alex called them) at her high school when she embarrassed herself like that, but what looked like a genuine and friendly, if a bit _too_ amused, smile. Her heart lifted a bit and she refocused on the conversation.

"I'm sorry what?"

"That's my name, Lena. Since you didn't ask"

"Oh Ra- I mean God, I'm sorry, you're completely right, I'm being horribly rude, I didn't even ask for your name or introduce myself! Can we just…start over? Pretend I didn't act like a complete spaz and that we just met?"

"Well…I'm not sure I'll be able to forget that image of you on your knees with your hair all dishevelled like that, but I know what you mean. Sure, we can start over. Hello, I'm Lena Davies, your roommate for the next year I suppose."

_Did she just flirt with me? Was that flirting? Rao! Why can't I ever tell about these things? I know Alex said that liking some girls a bit _too_ much like I do was not considered _normal _on this planet and would only draw unwanted attention to me, but she also said it wasn't bad or all that uncommon, that even _shetoo_ felt that way about her girl-friends sometimes. Relax Kara! You just met her a second ago for Rao's sake, you have an entire year to get to know her._

"Hi Lena Davies! I like your name by the way, _Lena, _it's…pretty. Urghm. I mean, Hi! I'm Kara! Kara Danvers! It's so _great_ to meet you!" she answered excitedly with a wave that her new roommate observed bemusedly, still the very picture of elegance and self-control.

"Kara…that's a pretty name too. It suits you"

_Okay, _that _was _definitely _flirting wasn't it?_

"Oh! Uhmmm…well, thanks. So…I guess I should probably start by putting my stuff away rather than on the, uh, floor, again I'm so sorry about that. So, I'll just…do that now." She responded meekly while blushing even redder than before, still embarrassed and completely off-balance. This day was _not_ going the way she had thought it would, and she wasn't all that displeased about it, maybe because she still had that glorious vision fixed in her brain.

_Be cool Kara_, she told herself as she hurriedly started to pick up her fallen luggage. Only she _still_ didn't know what Alex meant by that. She suspected it was probably what the other girl was managing right now.

She carefully looked back towards…Lena, and she found the other girl seemingly studying her with interest. Her own eyes inadvertently darted to her full lips and she felt another dangerous flash of heat under her gaze.

_Oh Rao_, this was going to be _long_ year.

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Thus ends chapter 2.

Review.


	3. Chapter 3

New/old chapter 3.

Still not mine

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_Lena and Kara_

Lena knew that she had a nasty habit of making snap judgements about people. It was both a skill and a defence mechanism that came with growing up the way she did, surrounded by snakes and vultures. When everyone wants something from you, you learned to protect yourself pretty quickly; and when you were as smart as Lena, you did this by learning to instantly read and categorize people, searching for potential threats everywhere. And over time, she became _very_ good at it.

This was why she was feeling so unbalanced ever since the moment the blonde hurricane crashed through her door, because she kept getting her wrong.

At first, she had taken in the shiny blonde hair, pastel colours and healthy skin in the middle of flailing limbs and luggage and she'd instantly figured that karma was a bitch in saddling her with some dumb blonde cheerleader-bimbo type for a roommate that would spend all her time partying and bringing home random guys, like she had been fearing just a second ago.

Then the girl looked up.

And Lena found herself staring at the most brilliant and beautiful pair of blue eyes she'd ever seen. As her vision enlarges progressively, she realizes that those two impossibly blue eyes were framed within the visage of…an angel, or a fairy princess, or a siren, or some other unnamed impossibly beautiful creature. Perfect, pulpous, and rosy lips that drew her eyes almost immediately. A flawless skin that seemed to literally _glow_ with some kind of inner light but was also cutely flushed pink from embarrassment from her ears down to…Lena would really like to find out. Her dishevelled golden mane of hair had slipped from her ponytail and had surrounded her face like a halo, a few strands in front of her face, giving her a look that somehow melded wield, sexy fierceness with sweet and virginal innocence. _Oh good God._

They spent a far-too-long-to-be-appropriate moment just staring at each other. She felt tingles of pleasure and pride (and heat?) when she noticed the other girl seemingly drinking all of her body in from head to toe just as she was hers, before the blonde seemingly regained her senses, turned beet red and shut her eyes closed forcefully as she began to pat the floor for her pair of glasses with her eyes still shut.

Lena sucked in a breath and gripped the edge of her bed tightly as she was hit with an intense and powerful wave of attraction for the creature kneeling before her. Her fingers tightened on the bed-frame to make sure they didn't decide to dart out and brush against that tantalizing skin like she wanted to _so much_. The other girl quickly and embarrassedly struggled back up and slipped her glasses back on her nose, still wearing the cutest blush. It also gave Lena a glimpse of the perfect curves that were hidden beneath clothes that looked like they belonged to a tenth-grader.

Christ! She'd never met _anyone_ so physically perfect in her entire life and she'd met _a lot_ of beautiful people of all race and gender, they tended to congregate around the rich and powerful. Though with her hair back into a tight ponytail, her glasses back on, her schoolgirl clothes (was that actually a cardigan?) smoothed back down and the girl now fidgeting nervously; she immediately looked younger, more innocent and less painfully attractive than she did a second ago. But that vision of her flushed, with messy hair and low enough on her knees for even her modest décolletage to allow a glimpse of the pale flesh beneath; that wasn't going away any time soon, she was sure.

She blinked, seemingly for the first time, when the blonde turned away from her after their short introduction. The girl still appeared embarrassed as she gathered her stuff to put it away on her side of the room while periodically glancing towards Lena, but that blush of hers made her look even lovelier in Lena's opinion. As she was thinking that, her eyes were unconsciously following her new roommate's scrumptious backside across the room and-

Oh shit.

Shit, shit, shit. This was _bad_, this was _very bad_.

She hadn't even considered _that_ when imagining who her roommate would be, hadn't thought the fates would be so cruel as to put her in the same position twice. But just thinking back to the past few minutes, she knew she was already in deep trouble. _A pretty name, it suits you_? Oh, _please. _Could she have been any more obvious? But, of all the people she'd ever imagined as her roommate, she'd never expected…that. She had been prepared for petty and shallow, rude and obnoxious, shy and annoying but not for…innocent, sweet and gorgeous? It didn't quite convey what she'd thought at first, but looking at her now, it kind of fit she thought.

She was dressed in pastel colours and conservative clothes, she didn't seem to be wearing any makeup whatsoever (not that she needed it, but it felt _off_ somehow in a teenage girl) and she thought she'd spied a lot of pink and pale blue sweaters among the clothes she was arranging in her closet. Her accent had been surprisingly difficult to place, she wanted to say Midwestern, but there had been an exotic quality to it she'd never quite heard before. Still, she was going to go with naive daddy's girl from the Midwest who was off on her first grand adventure. Majoring in either English-Lit or Com she thought, probably an over-protective older sibling or dad or both, probably a romantic (she hoped it was the Brontë type and not the Stephanie Meyers type), probably not that smart, probably as shallow as she was beautiful (the two had the unfortunate habit of going hand in hand in many cases), probably pining for a dumb-as-rocks football-team boyfriend she'd left back home. _Typical, cliché, vaguely pathetic_.

And all this would have been just fine with Lena except for one thing, she _still_ couldn't stop looking at her. Her heart was _still _beating too fast, her breath was _still_ too heavy, she was almost sweating and she was uncertain how to begin the conversation. Those kinds of things didn't happen to Lena, she didn't get nervous, she get didn't flustered, ever. Or at least, not in _years_. Except in one particular case and she recognized the symptoms already…when she had a _crush_.

Oh, this was very, very _bad_.

This was the first day and she was already crushing on her straight roommate, what was wrong with her? Hadn't she gone through something like this before? This would make the rest of the year a nightmare.

_Was she straight though?_ Whispered the devil on her shoulder, or had that been the angel?

Hmmm…Judging from her wardrobe, haircut, probable background and general demeanour, she would go with _definitely yes_. She just screamed _good little girl_ from a small town. And yet, during that first moment, there had been _something_ in her eyes hadn't there? For a second there, the blonde's gaze had been so intense and heavy and _hot_, that she could have sworn she'd started to feel actual heat wherever blue eyes touched her skin. And then she snapped her eyes shut so forcefully, it was like she'd just caught her parents having sex. Embarrassed by her own reaction maybe, her attraction? Or was that just wishful thinking on her part and the girl had merely been plain embarrassed?

Gah! She was already starting to over-analyse every little thing and she hadn't even been here ten minutes. It didn't matter she decided. Her possible crush didn't matter, the fact that her roommate was gay, straight, bi, or whatever else didn't matter; whatever the answer, it would invariably lead to its own unique set of complications and awkwardness in the end and all of those things she wanted to avoid with someone that she was stuck with in close proximity for an entire year.

"So…what's your major?" she asked to break the tension after their painful introduction, or had she been the only one of them tense? And, gag her, could she sound anymore lame? Why not ask her about the weather while you're at it? Or, how 'bout 'em Lakers?

The girl…Kara, she'd said, _It really _was_ a pretty name_, who'd had her back to her as she was organizing her stuff, jumped in surprise when she heard her and dropped the alarm clock she had been about to set up on her night-stand. Lena winced and awaited the sound of something breaking…which never came. The self-proclaimed spaz had just caught the alarm-clock she'd been sure had been a goner about two inches from the ground…with only two fingers of her left hand…and without actually turning her head. And then…she immediately dropped it to the ground again.

_Okay_…

"Oh! Sorry, you startled me, I'm such a spaz" _Right._ "In answer to your question, I'm doing a major in sociology and a minor in journalism, and this is my first year so I'm super excited! But you already knew that, because this is the freshman dorms…sorry. So, uh… what about you, what's _your _major?" Kara answered her in the over-excited tone of voice she was coming to associate with her (and one she would have to get used she suspected). She was so earnest, shy and seemingly innocent that Lena would normally be restraining herself from gagging her at this point, but coming from Kara, it somehow wasn't annoying, it was…_cute_.

"I'm doing a double major, physics and mathematics"

"Wow really? That's great! Good subjects those, lots of…_room to grow_" responds Kara, looking genuinely impressed, and kind of…amused?

"Uh, yeah, thanks. Wish I could say the same, but you know what they say about newspapers…" mumbled Lena off-handily, completely off-balance yet again. What was wrong with her?

"Ah yes, I know that one! _The print is a dying media_. Ha! That was it right?" she says excitedly, looking insanely proud at having slipped the idiom in like she was imitating somebody, she _clearly _didn't interact with other people much.

This girl seemed as sweet and excitable as a ten-year old on a sugar-high, but the weird part was, Lena didn't find it irritating at all. She usually couldn't stand those kinds of girls: the false cheeriness and modesty, the feigned innocence, the constant smiling; all of it religiously recorded and shared on social media and all of it, so very, very _fake; _she'd seen it all before, mostly in cheerleaders. But from Kara, while she definitely had the looks, her behaviour came off as endearing somehow, maybe because it actually appeared genuine? And her smiling wasn't annoying at all, it was just…_beautiful_, and for once, she didn't want it to stop.

"Yes…?" Lena replied doubtfully, because as cute as the girl was, she was also acting a bit…strangely.

"Oh, sorry. I'm being weird again aren't I?" she quickly asked, her smile fading at seeing the doubtful look on Lena's face.

"Yes you are." Lena answered in her usual direct tone because…_she_ _was_.

She regrets her words almost immediately when she sees the crestfallen look on the girl's face, there's genuine hurt there and the fact was, normally this wouldn't bother her. Lena wasn't one to mince words or particularly care about hurting an other's feelings. She was hardly cruel but she did have a habit of being painfully blunt and honest, it was a counter-reaction from having grown up surrounded by lies whispered in honeyed words by serpent's tongues all her life, and people soon learned that about her. Some people could handle it and actually liked it, others didn't, Lena usually didn't much care either way. Except now, for some reason (_yeah, right, _some_ reason_) she found herself caring and feeling bad. Her roommate's lack of self-confidence was more than a little obvious and she likely took far more from her comment than Lena had really meant. This kind of timidity didn't come from nowhere and she got the distinct impression that this girl had been teased and maybe bullied in high-school, she had that kind of vibe to her (although she felt she had to be missing something there, because girls as hot as Kara were, as a rule, exempt from things like bullying or paying for their own drinks, it was just a law of the universe). This meant that her usual acerbic type of humour might not fly so well here.

"Oh. Sorry, I'll just-" the blonde quickly responds in her meek voice and turned her back to her again, giving Lena the feeling that the other girl had been expecting those words since the moment she stepped, or rather fell, into the room.

"But I like it." quickly added Lena in the same direct tone as before, just as blunt, just as honest and not sure where that had just come from.

This stops the girl cold and she slowly turns back around and looks at Lena with such hopeful and impossibly blue eyes, Lena feels her heart clench. This was like being stared down by Bambi.

"You – you do?" she asks in the same meek voice but tinged with hope instead of defeat this time.

Lena considers the other girl for a moment before speaking.

"_Yep_. Not sure why though. You're definitely a weird one Kara Danvers, but I believe it's the _good _kind of weird. And besides, there are far worst things to be than _weird_, trust me on that one. I think you and I are going to get along just fine." Lena finally tells her, meaning every word.

The change over Kara was like the sun coming out and the entire world turning to colour, she half expected a rainbow to burst through the room and a flock of doves to start chirping. A huge smile threatened to break free from the blonde's face and her brilliant blue eyes shined with unshod tears. It was one of the most beautiful sights Lena had ever witnessed.

"Yay!" the blonde exclaims in joy, jumping up and down excitedly before rushing forwards her to envelop Lena in a tight hug.

And, damn, was that girl fast! Lena had barely the time to blink before she found herself encircled in the softest, nicest, warmest, _strongest_ hug she'd ever received.

Stiff as a board from surprise and from her instinctive disdain for being touched (that seemed to have seriously toned at the moment), Lena isn't sure what to do, this doesn't normally happen. She could feel the incredible warmth of the strong body pressed against her, smell Kara's intoxicating natural scent that reminded her of sunshine somehow, feel her soft as silk blonde hair tickling her face. It all felt…_nice, really ni. _Her heart was beating a hundred miles an hour and just as she was about to give in to the wonderful warmth freely offered and wrap her own arms around Kara just as tightly, she starts to notice a rather alarming fact.

"Can't…breathe…" she whimpers as she felt her chest being slowly crushed by twin metal bars.

Kara backs up immediately and one look at her terrified almost tear-filled face, tells Lena, still struggling to gain her breath back, that the girl is about to run away. She didn't know why, or how she knew that, she just did.

Just as the blonde was nearly out of her reach, backing away from her with a shocked and fearful face that Lena didn't quite understand, she managed to snatch her roommate's warm hand before she could move away completely. Kara pauses, startled, and shyly looks back up.

"Like I said, _weird…_but_ good, _okay_?_" says Lena simply, in a slight slightly breathless but sincere voice, while giving a tiny squeeze of her hand and hopes that her simple words and gesture are enough to convey the depth of what she's trying to say. This was turning into a very strange encounter she idly thought.

The look Kara gives her in return pins her right to her spot. It is so heavy and filled with so much emotion that she almost can't breathe for the second time. And Lena has never dealt with strong emotions very well.

So she lets the warm hand go and takes a step back.

"Just…no more hugging, okay?" the brunette tells her roommate in a deadpan voice.

This was one of her usual "rules" when dealing with friends or roommates, having always been uncomfortable with physical contact (she was aware that this was a painfully clichéd symptom of growing up starved of affection like she had but the fact remained: she didn't like to be touched unexpectedly). But, in this case, there was another reason to add the rule. Kara looked like a touchy-feely kind of a girl and that kind of behaviour coupled with her already ridiculous attraction to the blonde would surely drive her crazy over time. Best to nip it in the bud now while she still had a chance and some semblance of dignity.

"Oh…Yeah, of course. _No hugging,_ I can do that, totally. I'm so sorry ab-" she answered, looking like someone had kicked her puppy. And again, Lena actually _felt bad_, what in the hell was happening to her?

She interrupted what she could already tell was going be yet another painfully awkward apology.

"And that's the other thing. Enough with the "sorries" okay? We've only been roommates for fifteen minutes and I must've heard you apologize at least five times already."

"I'm sor- I umm. Yeah, you might have a point…" replied Kara embarrassedly, looking pointedly at her shoes and fiddling with her glasses.

An angel flew as the strange introduction came to an end and the two girls found themselves at a loss for what to say or do as they had both put away their stuff already and were now facing each other, sitting on their tiny respective beds.

Lena took the initiative again, having done this before.

"So, why sociology then?"

"Oh, well, I don't know. School is where you come to gain _new_ knowledge right? As in, things you don't already know? To understand them. And, ummm, as I'm sure you've noticed by now, I'm not very good with…people or society in general really. I'm trying but I don't think I really understand them or I wouldn't be making so many mistakes all the time. So…when it came time to choose my subjects, I picked the one that I thought I had the most to learn from: the study of human society, it's fascinating really, so many different cultures in just one place. It was either that or anthropology, though I'm auditing a few of those classes as well"

Lena had to take a moment to process what she'd just heard, was this girl for real? When she'd asked people about their majors before, it was all about what future career this'll get them, how prestigious it was, how rebellious or forward-thinking they were for taking the class, how little work would be required, how attractive the professor was, how mummy and daddy insisted…not one person had mentioned doing a major because she didn't understand the subject (because _who does that? _And who doesn't understand _society_? What's there to understand?). Also, did she just refer to the entire planet as "a place"?

"I'm not sure how much you'll learn about people from sociology 101, anthropology or any classroom really, but I get what you're saying. I actually find it rather laudable if a little atypical maybe. Most people, they major in what they're best at you know, you seem to have decided to do the exact opposite. I'm kind of…impressed, actually" said Lena and was kind of surprised herself when she realized she meant every word.

"Oh…well, umm, thank you. But I'm not sure I get it; why would people come to this place and spend all of their time studying something that they already know? Since they're already good at it like you said. It seems a bit odd no? You'd think they'd take the opportunity to learn something new…"

Again, Lena found herself stumped by that girl's thought process. She couldn't decide if her roommate was simply stupid, if she was unbearably naïve, if she was actually a very clever liar that had been sarcastically making fun of her since they met or if she was simply…that genuine. Whatever she was, Lena couldn't remember ever meeting someone quite like her.

"They're here to _improve_ their knowledge Kara. It's not because you're good at something in high-school that you know everything about it and no matter how smart you are, some things you just have to study. Hence…college. It's not like _you_ know everything else either, is it? Because if so, you're welcome to do my physics homework when it starts getting assigned, oh great genius"

Kara winced and started avoiding her eyes again while playing with her hair, her face dropping like she'd just made some mistake on a maths quiz.

Lena sighed and tried again.

"So…you like music?" Lena opened with a classic teenage ice-breaker, noticing Ipod ear-buds on her bed and figured this was a "safe" subject.

It worked and the girl perked right back up. It seemed that Kara Danvers got happy just as quick as she got sad. It made Lena a bit uncomfortable since she was hardly ever _either_.

"Oh yeah. Totally, music is great _here_, so many genres, so different! I mean, you probably know _way_ more bands and stuff than me but my sister is always bringing me new music so I'm getting there. She actually gave me her Ipod before I left, so I have a lot to choose from. What about you, do you like music?"

"Yes, yes I do like it. So what kind of music are you into? I can usually tell just by looking at someone but with you, apart from maybe country? I've got nothing"

"Can you really do that? And yeah, I guess I do like country, I kind of hear a lot of it where I'm from, but it's not my favourite. I don't know, I guess I'm a bit into everything"

"Well, that's a lame answer. That's the answer people who don't actually listen to music give when you ask them that." Deadpans Lena.

"Hey! I listen to music! Really. And it wasn't a "lame" answer, it was just…the truth. I like classical music and EDM because it reminds me of home, I like jazz for the unpredictability, I like singers for the feelings, Hip-Hop for those crazy "beats" they have though I don't like the words much, and I like…a lot of other stuff! I'm not lame!" answers Kara, once again having taken her off-hand comment that she hadn't really meant anything by too personally and far too quickly. Right, tone down on the sarcasm Lena.

She was very impressed by her answer though, it looked like she really _did_ know her music and the way she'd described it felt very much like the way Lena experienced it as well she thought. But once again, her answer to a completely typical teenage question was completely atypical. Instead of immediately starting to list her favourite bands like most teens would, she seemed to think and experience the world in some wide conceptual terms somehow. Which only served to make the girl even odder in Lena's opinion, after all, anyone who had something in common with herself was surely not normal. And "classical music and EDM remind me of home"? What did _that _mean? Those were maybe the two genres she would associate the _least_ with either each other _or_ the Midwest.

"You're right, my turn to be sorry. It's just not often that you meet somebody who says they listen to every genre and actually means it"

"Well, don't make me out to be some kind of music encyclopaedia or anything, you'll be disappointed trust me. Like I said, you probably know way more than I do. But, yeah, most of what my sister played me, I actually really liked, not _everything_ mind you, like _disco_, urgh, even _I_ have standards, but I like it better than…what I _used_ to listen to"

"Ha! Good to know we agree on disco. It's good to have standards. So, where are you from in the Midwest?" Lena kept up with her one-sided questioning.

"How did you know I'm from the Midwest? _Do I have an accent_? Oh, I _do_, don't I? Finally!" Kara answered, startled at first, then insanely pleased for some reason.

"Uh…yeah, you have a bit of a Midwestern accent, why? Did you _not _before?" asked Lena puzzled. As she carefully focused her hearing on Kara's accent, she remarked the same thing she had before; there was a strange undertone to it. A lilting, musical quality that sometimes enveloped her words and that held no place in the English language. Strangely, she couldn't even make a guess as to what other language the blonde must have talked, it didn't remind her of anything she knew. And not only did Lena have a good ear for things like this, she also spoke seven different languages, so that almost never happened.

"Oops, sorr- urgh, you know. I just get excited about…stuff. _Too_ excited my mom says. I'll try to, umm, contain it. But yeah, I'm from the _Mid_west, actually from a town called _Mid_vale, so it was really the _Mid_dle of nothing. Ha!" answered her roommate more sedately this time, and again, she looked insanely proud of having slipped her lame joke into the conversation. Lena _did_ notice that the girl had artfully evaded her last question though but merely filed it in her mind.

"That was a bit of a _Mid_dling joke don't you think?"

Kara barked out laughing and Lena felt quite pleased with herself.

"Oh Ra- uhm, God. I can't believe that's the first time I've heard that. People used to make that joke _all the time_ back in school and yet no one ever thought of that somehow"

That was the second or third time that the blonde caught herself before she let out an expletive that began with "Ra", but that she always clumsily switched to "god" for some reason. _Definitely weird_.

"What about you? Where are you from? I'm afraid I'm not too great with accents so I've got nothing" asked Kara in an upbeat voice as she settled herself more comfortably on her own bed across from her. She already seemed to be coming out of her shell a bit which pleased Lena immensely for some reason.

"I'm from Metropolis"

"Really? The big city huh? That must've been exciting, all the art and the culture all around you. My cousin lives there so I've been a few times and it's a definite step-up from Midvale believe me. Kind of crowded though I thought, and _noisy_, urgh. And, hey, wait a sec. If you're from Metropolis, how come you didn't go to Met-U? I heard it's a great school, that's actually where my cousin went"

"Well, my _home_ was in Metropolis, but I didn't actually spend a lot of time there growing up, I was always away in some boarding school or another. England sometimes, Switzerland mostly and one in Italy and another in Japan. So I'll admit, I probably don't know Metropolis as well as I should, being a native and all. Plus it's always a hassle with my body-, urghm, body-_clock_, with the travelling and all. So…yeah." Responded Lena as coolly as ever at first but stumbling at the end when she had been about to say "bodyguards", which would have been a dead giveaway, why would Lena _Davies_ need bodyguards. And since when did Lena Luthor make these kinds of basic mistakes anyway?

"Wow, that's…a _lot_ of boarding schools. I mean, I'm sure it must have been awesome travelling to all those cool countries, I _so_ want to go to Japan, makes me wish I could fly…But, urgh, didn't you, like…miss your family?" asked Kara, naturally focusing on that aspect that was so familiar.

Lena couldn't help but scoff dismissively in response.

"No, not really. I missed my brother a bit but we emailed a lot and he was always at school himself, and then college anyway. As for my father…my father was very busy. And boarding schools really aren't so bad once you've learned all their tricks, can be kind of fun actually, made a lot of good friends…" Lena answered, giving her usual generic answer that almost got stuck in her throat. She didn't know what was happening, she'd been through this _dozens_ of times, but there was something about the way the other girl was looking at her that made Lena want to tell her truth and nothing but the truth. It was crazy.

"Oh, okay. What about your mom though? Didn't you miss _her_?"

A flash of pain unexpectedly hits Lena as she thinks of the mother she couldn't remember, tries to picture a memory of her face other than surrounded by dirty water and sinking…

"I –I…I _do_ miss her, _everyday_." She whispers in a trembling voice, that old pain that she barely ever let herself feel coming back to the surface, just as sharp as ever.

She pulls back from the old memories to refocus on Kara and sees the blonde's face growing progressively more horrified, her mouth puffing open like a fish and tears already filling her eyes. She looked like somebody had just killed her best friend.

The blonde swallows hard and she sees a shadow pass over her brilliant blue eyes. When she speaks again, her voice is filled with more raw emotion than she's ever heard before.

"Oh Rao, Lena I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to – I should have known when you didn't mention her- I'm an _idiot_. Of course, you would be with your mom if she were…still here. I'm _truly_ sorry, I know wha-"

Lena _had_ _to_ stop her from speaking then: the compassion, the sympathy, the _pity_ was all too real, too genuine, without a trace of lip service, and it was too much. She didn't know what had even possessed her to start thinking let alone actually _speak_ of her biological mother, she _never_ did that, never mentioned _her_, to anyone. She always spoke of Lillian when talking about her "mother".

"My mother isn't dead Lena, she just hates me. That's why she kept sending me away to boarding school, so she didn't have to look at me." She interrupts in a cold voice, anything to make Kara stop looking at her like _that_. She's speaking of Lillian now of course.

But what had been meant to assuage her roommate had the opposite effect. She seemed to become even more distraught and emotional, and _that_ _look_ only increased in intensity.

"I – what? But I could have _sworn_ that- Wait, _she _hates _you? _Your mother _hates _you? Lena that's horrible, but…why? Why would she hate you? _How_ can she hate you? She's your _mother_! She's, like, biologically _obligated_ to love you, isn't she? How could she-" screams Kara in an increasingly hysterical voice that she couldn't understand. A comment like that with the girls in boarding school would've earned her an eye-roll and a "parents suck" and that was that. Kara seemed to find her situation to be the greatest of tragedies. Did she have to take _everything_ so personally?

"She's my _step_-mother Kara, she has _zero_ biological imperative towards me, believe me. She barely has any for her _actual_ son, so for me…" quickly interrupted Lena, really starting to wonder why she felt compelled to stop her naïve roommate from feeling bad all the time.

"I – I…okay, I guess. But what about your _real_ mother then? Surely, _she_ doesn't hate you. Did your parents get, like, a divorce or something? Is she remarried? And, again, I'm sorry for assuming that she was…you know, I don't know why I jumped to that conclusion right away…Just me being weird again I guess, huh?"

"Actually…you were right Kara. My mother, my biological one at least, _is_ dead." Admits Lena in a soft voice and she has _no idea_ why.

"What? But you just said-"

"_I know what I said!_ Shit. Sorry. I – I don't know why I said that. I didn't mean to lie exactly, it just slipped out, I don't know why…"

There was a drawn-out pause as Lena berated herself for her very uncharacteristic display of _honesty_ and then she heard a confident voice clear as crystal that makes her look up sharply.

"It's because you couldn't stand the pity…Sorry about that, I hate it too" spoke Kara in a clearer and far more confident tone of voice then she'd ever heard from her, not a trace of stammer or shyness, it was almost like hearing a different person speak.

A person that was _exactly right_.

And when she looked up, Kara wasn't fidgeting, wringing her hands or playing with her hair. She was sat still on her bed and for perhaps the first time since Lena met her, her face betrayed almost no emotion. Except for the eyes, those impossible blue orbs were spearing right through her and there was such _knowing _and _understanding_ in there. There was also something else underneath; something that had flashed ever so briefly but that had felt massive, Lena thought it might be _pain_.

"How?" is all she asked, all that needed to be asked.

"I – I umm…I know how you feel. Well I don't know _exactly _how of course, but enough to recognize the look I guess. That's because…umm…_my_ parents, my real parents I mean, they're…umm…they're dead too."

_Oh God_.

It clicked and Lena saw it right then and there, just like Kara had seen it in _her_ even faster. _Orphans_. The both of them. _That_ had been the knowledge and certainty in her eyes, it was a pain born from indelible grief that you either had or hadn't. There was no explaining it to people who didn't have it, and no need to explain it to the people who did.

Kara did. Behind the bubbly smiles and sweet naiveté, she could sense that shadow hanging over her now, it had always been there but she was only noticing it now, what else was she missing?

"Shit. But you mentioned your mom earlier…"

"Oh, uhmm…yeah, I'm adopted. The Danvers, they adopted me after…you know. They were…friends of the family, kind of. But they've been great, really, I love them a lot" said Kara, regaining her bubbly composure impossible fast, _too fast_. It wasn't over the top and there was still a definite frailness in the girl but the shift had been smooth enough for Lena to finally understand that her seemingly sweet and naïve roommate was a lot better at hiding her feelings than she'd thought.

"And your sister? Is she-" Lena didn't quite know how to ask if the sister she'd mentioned several times already was her real sister or not without sounding offensive.

"Oh, Alex? Yeah, no, she isn't my biological sister either, she's my adoptive sister too, but she's…_the greatest, _really. She's so bad-ass and confident and always knows what to say and…everything I'm _not _basically. And she drives a motorcycle, does kickboxing, always listens to the best music, goes to parties and she even got a tattoo! Oh my mom hated it! But seriously, Alex has got to be, like, my favourite person, but don't ever tell _her_ I said that though, I'd never live it down. I always wanted a sister growing up and then I finally got one, except I had to loose everyone else to get her…"

"That was also when you lost your parents. I'm sorry Kara, I didn't mean to remind you of that. But can I- no, never mind. It's great that you get along so well with your sister, it actually reminds me a bit of me and my brother, how we used to be anyway…But enough family drama I think-"

"You _can_ ask you know. I mean, I don't like to talk about it of course, and actually I rarely even mention it, I just let people think I've always been a Danvers. I don't know why I told _you_, but you can ask, if you want, I'm sure you're wondering" said Kara, letting a bit of her earlier confidence slip through again. There was no need to mention what she was talking about but Lena was quite interested, and pleased somehow, to discover that her roommate seemed to be suffering from the same wave of compulsive honesty that had hit Lena. It did look more natural on the blonde though.

"Okay. So, what, uhmm…what _happened_?"

Kara shifted and looked to the side, her face going slack, her eyes hollow as she was obviously recalling a horrible memory. The change from her usual brilliant smile and joyous energy was like the sun going out and being replaced by a black hole.

"There was an _explosion_. A very _big_ explosion. On my- _at_ my home. And…my whole family was inside, my parents, my aunt and uncle, pretty much everyone I knew actually." Her voice was calm, practically flippant, in that way people spoke when any feeling apart from a morbid and twisted kind of sarcasm was just too painful to even contemplate.

Jesus, her _entire family_ was dead?

"Oh Kara…"

"It was quick, that's good I suppose, or so people tell me. It happened so fast that they didn't have time to…_burn_, I took comfort in that. The whole…_house_, just blew apart all at once…I'll never forget it" she kept speaking, her voice still holding that flippant edge, still looking into some deep memory with eyes holding such a profound grief that just being around her, Lena felt like she was drowning in it.

"You _saw_ it?" exclaimed Lena, because she had been imagining that the girl must have simply been at a friend's house or something and learned all of this second hand from the police.

"Hmm? Yes, yes I saw it. I was, umm, _outside_. Far enough away so it didn't touch me but I saw it all _very clearly_. One moment there was home, then…_nothing_, just the stars in sky…It made _no_ sense to me. How could it just be there and then…_not?_"

"How old were you Kara?"

"I was 13…After that, I umm, _moved_ to America, to um _reunite_ with my cousin. The one I told you about who's a journalist in Metropolis. He's my last living relative but we didn't really know each other, still don't for that matter; he was kind of _sent away_ to America when he was just a baby, he grew up in Kansas. Anyway, he was already all grown up and he had a job and a girlfriend and I guess he didn't really want to deal with some teenage girl he didn't even know so he asked the Danvers if they would be willing to adopt me and…here I am."

Lena really had nothing to say to that. This wasn't how these types of first introductory meetings usually went in her experience. In fact there was nothing _usual_ about the girl in front of her at all. One thing she mentioned did put another puzzle piece in place though, and probably explained the accent.

"So…where was it that you grew up then? You said you moved to American only _after_" asked Lena, her being foreign felt kind of right, there had been something a bit different about the girl from the start and maybe that was it.

"Oh, umm, Sweden. Yeah, I'm from Sweden. Swedish is me. _Hej. _That's why I have blonde hair, because lots of people in Sweden have blond hair."

"Yeah…I guess they do. Can't say I've ever been to Sweden, did you…like it there?"

Okay…_Sweden_, she supposed she could see it. She did kind of look the part (which _really_ made her want to visit Sweden sometime if all their girls looked like _that_), and Lena didn't speak Swedish so that might be what she was hearing in her accent (except it didn't sound Slavic at all). And there was the girl's general oddness that could be explained by the culture shock or something, she did give off a kind of "tourist seeing everything for the first-time" vibe that Lena had merely attributed to small-town naiveté. And of course, the tragedy she'd suffered at such a formative age was more than enough to explain her shyness and social awkwardness.

It all more or less fit but for some reason, Lena felt like she was still missing a piece of the puzzle, she was certainly not about to ask though. She felt humbled by the girl's raw honesty to a perfect stranger and it had made Lena feel loads better, as horrible as that sounds, about her own inadvertent confession about her biological mother. And the blonde certainly hadn't told her to elicit pity or to make herself sound more interesting (people actually did do that), if anything, Lena suspected that the other girl might've told her specifically to "even the playing field" and make _her_ feel better.

That single interaction had just added a level of intimacy to her relationship with this Kara Danvers that normally took her months to reach with her roommates, if she ever did. Their shared loss binding them in an unspoken but very potent way.

"I did, most of the time anyway. Things weren't perfect but I had my family and we were…happy. It was a lot different than it is here…a lot _colder_ for one. Heh, heh. But, I don't know, it's hard to explain, things just made sense to me there, that's all. It was home you know. But _here_, uhmm America I mean, things, people, they're _so_ different that I…well, I don't quite understand things sometimes, or _people_. Simple things even, stuff you'd probably think me dumb for not understanding, but sometimes it's all just…_too much_. I'm probably not making much sense…"

"No, you're making a lot of sense Kara. And you're _not_ dumb okay? Everybody can have trouble with the basics sometimes, I uhh – I did too a bit, when I was little. My situation wasn't the same as yours but I guess there are some…similarities"

"You don't _have_ to tell me Lena. I'm the one who unloaded on you like that, don't feel like you have to-"

"No, no. I _want _to. I can't even imagine what it's like to lose everything like you did Kara, but I do understand what it's like to be…_dumped_ in some strange new place where you don't know anything or anybody."

"How…"

"My…uhh, my mother died when I was four, she drowned. I can barely even remember what she looked like now. My father never talked about her, never showed me pictures. The only image of her face I can really remember is…never mind. But anyway, after she…_died_, I was sent to an orphanage in Metropolis until I was five thinking I was just a nameless orphan like all the others: that is until my father found me, until he told me his name, _my name_ and brought me home with him that very day. The big house, this new family I didn't know I had, all of it, I remember how so fucking terrified I was. And the orphanage…the orphanage wasn't a _good _place, but some days…some days I wish I'd stayed there" said Lena in an uncharacteristically fragile voice, finishing with barely a whisper. She was being more honest with this stranger within a couple hour of meeting her than she'd been with any of her various best-friends, boyfriends or girlfriends over the past fifteen years.

"Sometimes I wish I'd been in the _house_ with them…" was whispered across from her.

And the girls looked at each other then, both reassessing the other, both feeling a sense of deep connection with the other in that way only pain and tragedy can unite.

They were no longer strangers now.

Neither of them knew just _what_ they were (or what they would become to each other) but both felt that same peculiar feeling.

It was a feeling akin to meeting your oldest friend as a stranger, of feeling something inside of you shift the tiniest bit and knowing that the change, good or bad and whatever it may bring, was forever.

Some people called it _falling in love_, but neither of the girls considered that at the time.

There wasn't much said after that, both girls feeling emotionally drained and seeking the temporary solace of unconsciousness, but the silence had become comfortable now. There was none of that initial awkwardness and unease of sharing a room with a stranger for the first time. They went through their evening routines (Kara's was considerably shorter than hers she noticed, how did a girl have a skin _that_ flawless without using face masks or even moisturizer? Maybe she just didn't bother for the first day), got in their sleeping attire and slipped under the covers of their respective bed. They faced each other as they lay on their side, and both knew now was the time to switch their night-lights off and say goodnight, but neither of them really wanted to.

"It was _really_ nice to meet you Lena"

"It was really nice to meet you too Kara. I think…I'm _glad_ that _you_'re my roommate"

"I think…I'm glad Iam too"

They both shared a quiet chuckle and finally switched the lights off, plunging the room in darkness.

"Goodnight Kara"

"Goodnight Lena"

"See you tomorrow…"

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End Chapter of chapter 1 or 3, differing on your perspective.

More to come soon. But shorter chapters like these.

I respond well to reviews so you know what to do.


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